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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23025238">In Which, Camping</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken'>Davechicken</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman &amp; Terry Pratchett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:41:04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,710</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23025238</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Davechicken/pseuds/Davechicken</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Aziraphale convinces Crowley to go camping with him.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>54</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>In Which, Camping</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisalicious/gifts">Lisalicious</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Sometimes the angel had decent ideas. Regularly, in fact.  These ideas normally worked best because they were aligned to his key tenets, and those were not ‘guard things with swords’ but ‘have a jolly nice and slightly pompous time’. </p>
<p>Which made this idea doomed to fail, but also meant working out what had prompted it was essential to trying to stop it.</p>
<p>“You will hate it,” Crowley said, nose over the rim of his glass as if the crosshairs aiming on target.</p>
<p>“I shan’t. It will be an adventure!”</p>
<p>“You do remember your reaction to under-floor heating?”</p>
<p>“I thought it was tantamount to summoning Lucifer, by putting fire under the feet?”</p>
<p>“Well, yeah. But after that, when you got over the change thingy you have.”</p>
<p>“It’s only for a few nights, Crowley! We used to live like this all the time!”</p>
<p>“Not in sodding England we didn’t.”</p>
<p>“Only because we hadn’t travelled that far.”</p>
<p>“The minute they moved out of living like wild animals, you became a home-maker, and you can’t undo that fact. You - angel - are too pampered for this!”</p>
<p>That was, of course, the wrong thing to say. He’d been irked, and he’d let himself be wound up, and now the gauntlet was thrown down and Aziraphale would have to accept. Honour, dignity, and being a stubborn prig.</p>
<p>“The nice supplement in the paper said that in such times of austerity and whatnot, the return to nostalgic roots and experiencing a simpler, more rustic time was very good for one’s soul.”</p>
<p>He still got a paper. A literal, honest-to-goodness paper. With supplements. There was no hope, none. Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate, indeed. Or maybe Baldrick put it better? Doom, doom, doom, doom…</p>
<p>“I shall go with or without you, but I would much prefer your company, if you can rein in your melancholy humour.”</p>
<p>Humours. Seriously. He did know how old he sounded, didn’t he? Next there’d be leeches and before long  trepanning. Camping. WHY would anyone voluntarily do that? It was the Antichrist, wasn’t it? He’d put all those books about young scamps having Grand Adventures here, and now Aziraphale wanted to connect to a childhood he hadn’t even bloody had. </p>
<p>Ugh.</p>
<p>“I’m only going to stop you being assaulted by the wildlife.”</p>
<p>“Don’t be silly, animals love me.”</p>
<p>Love wasn’t the right word. “I meant the <i>outdoors</i> people.”</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Aziraphale dressed as if he’d watched too many nice documentaries on the telly about the genteel country lords. No one dressed like that. Not any more.</p>
<p>His Wellington boots were shiny and he’d made the toes a bit too pointy. He was - he was in - it was… tweed. Tweed. And yes, there were leather patches on elbows. And rugged, natural colours, perfect for getting lost in the actual, natural colours. And a little cap.</p>
<p>Might as well add a pipe and some bumpkin accent and go the full, offensive stereotypical hog. He hoped the angel didn’t try for an accent and dialect. He was terrible at it.</p>
<p>Crowley wore what Crowley wore. He intended to not let anything alive or once-alive even touch him, so it should be fine. </p>
<p>The Bentley did not like the temporary addition of the roof rack, but Aziraphale apparently needed them to look the part. </p>
<p>Why, oh why, oh why did Crowley put himself through this? (It was not that he actually enjoyed the bickering. Nope.)</p>
<p>The car had to remain in a grotty little car park which was really just slightly more grey gravel underfoot than the surrounding areas. Crowley made sure she would be okay, and promised a nice run through the B roads when they were done with the nonsense, and she agreed not to combust from shame.</p>
<p>Crowley - being taller - got all the things down from the roof rack (which was not going to exist unless required and immediately disappeared). And then he looked at Aziraphale, who could literally lift the car, or heavier, but who was making ridiculous eyes in an attempt to make Crowley offer to do the carrying. </p>
<p>“The point of roughing it, is to rough it,” he reminded the angel. </p>
<p>“Should I have booked a Sherpa?” Aziraphale asked, sounding serious but absolutely not being. </p>
<p>“Tell me where it’s going and it will get there.”</p>
<p>“That’s not cricket.”</p>
<p>“Cricket? Angel, don’t even try to sound like you think you should. And I am not lugging this lot around. Where in the blazes are we setting down?”</p>
<p>“The nice magazine suggested… hold on, I shall get my Ordnance Survey map out…”</p>
<p>Ordnance Survey. There was such a thing as Google maps. Bloody paper affair was probably - like the angel - several decades behind the times. Except this might be rural enough that it was only a dozen years out. Coastal erosion or something. Were they near a coast?</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>Tents did not like to go up. Even with demonic assistance. Maybe especially with demonic assistance, as even though Crowley hadn’t been responsible for their creation, he had certainly taken credit. (And for the littering of them in festivals. He had at least helped that one along, if not with too much effort.) </p>
<p>Poles. Upon poles. Upon pegs upon ground that didn’t want to be pegged, upon a gust of wind that nearly took the whole thing, upon Aziraphale trying to read the flimsy pamphlet instructions upon Crowley threatening to re-invent the baking of clay bricks, or at least find them a local Bed and Breakfast in a nice pub.</p>
<p>But it went up. And it was in no way a ‘two man’ tent. Not even if the two men were very friendly. Not even if they were literally conjoined twins.</p>
<p>He glowered at it, rubbing his fingers in front of the miraculously running fire.</p>
<p>“Isn’t it so very… bracing!” </p>
<p>Aziraphale clearly wanted to hold on to the fiction that this was a good idea.</p>
<p>“So was the Titanic. At the end.”</p>
<p>“Being so close to nature!”</p>
<p>“You are literally a few minutes away from the bloody park, and if you looked out your window at night, you’d see foxes. And rats. And--”</p>
<p>“Well, <i>I</i> am enjoying myself.”</p>
<p>And he might have been, until they tried camp-side food.</p>
<p>In the end, they settled for fire-touched toasted crumpets, butter, and a packet of chocolate digestives. </p>
<p>Crowley should have packed more constitutional alcohol, but he worried about the consequences if he got drunk like this.</p>
<p>***</p>
<p>The tent was small. Very small. And the wind was noisy. And it wasn’t as if they could hear homely noises like owls, but instead the creaking of trees and the distant sounds of the few motorists that echoed through the natural features. </p>
<p>Aziraphale’s smile was a little forced, now. </p>
<p>“My dear, I wonder if I could trouble you to… you see your elbow is…”</p>
<p>“My elbow is the only place my elbow can go.”</p>
<p>“It’s really rather… inconvenient.”</p>
<p>“I could turn into a snake and fuck off back to the wild?”</p>
<p>“Now, there’s no need for such language. I was simply making a polite request!”</p>
<p>“I offered a solution,” he sighed, and tried to roll in his fluffy coffin. The ground was pointy. No amount of foam would take that away. It was also slightly damp, and Crowley was sure he could feel things moving in the grass. </p>
<p>With some complicated occult-ethereal Tetrising, they managed to align so the in and out bits were better tessellated, and Crowley closed his eyes and wished for time to go faster. They could be at home. With a nice bottle of Malbec. With a documentary. With anything but this. </p>
<p>But it ‘built character’, or maybe it just made you thank the previous generations of Humans for mastering the art of plumbing, heating, insulation, and double-glazing. </p>
<p>Aziraphale shuffled. </p>
<p>“Was I a little harsh? In… asking you to join me?”</p>
<p>“Huh?”</p>
<p>“I mean, is this… really not something you enjoy?”</p>
<p>Crowley had two options, here. He could repeat what he’d been saying all along, and allow Aziraphale the dignity of calling the operation off as a gesture of thoughtful goodwill. Take him back home because he’d bowed to Crowley’s wishes, and wasn’t he a nice angel?</p>
<p>Or he could do the second thing, and be a bastard, and make the angel admit that he’d changed his mind and was looking for an ego-saving way out.</p>
<p>“Angel, it’s important to you,” he said, suaver than he needed to. “The real adventure is to spend time with you.”</p>
<p>Serve, and return.</p>
<p>“Yes, but shouldn’t I take your preferences into account, too? After all, perhaps your more ophidian qualities prefer a managed temperature?”</p>
<p>“You’re warm,” he countered, and spooned in tighter against him, with the two sleeping bags making it entirely pointless to try. </p>
<p>“I know you’re just trying to soothe my feelings, but I can’t help but--”</p>
<p>“Are you regretting the decision?”</p>
<p>“No! No, I--”</p>
<p>“Do you want me to take you home? Or somewhere close, for the night, to thaw out?”</p>
<p>“I didn’t say that!”</p>
<p>“Somewhere that does… a full English breakfast? Sausages… bacon… beans… toast…”</p>
<p>“...and Continental, too?”</p>
<p>“All the pastries you could want.”</p>
<p>Aziraphale pondered this. Warring, internally. Not wanting to admit defeat, but not wanting to stay, either.</p>
<p>“We don’t actually need to sleep,” the angel said, eventually. “So it is arbitrary when we get up and leave.”</p>
<p>“True.”</p>
<p>“And we <i>have</i> had the full experience.”</p>
<p>“Yup.”</p>
<p>“And there <i>was</i> that little pub we drove past on the way up…”</p>
<p>Hah. He’d had second thoughts before they even arrived. Crowley knew it. </p>
<p>“If we set out now, we will get there before last orders.”</p>
<p>The angel rolled over, smiling widely, and pecked his nose. “You’ve tempted me.”</p>
<p>Sure. Whatever helped him live with himself. Crowley stretched his legs, and felt the cold aching into his joints. “I’m making the tent disappear. If you think I’m trying to get that bastard thing back in the bag…”</p>
<p>“Oh, no, don’t be silly. It served us perfectly well.” Aziraphale started to wriggle himself out of the sleeping bag. “Do you think they will still be serving dinner?”</p>
<p>If they weren’t, Crowley would convince them it was in their best interests to. And now the angel owed him an unofficial favour. He was already working out what to cash it in on...</p>
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